Something, something, with Cheese

I'm a pop culture junkie cursed with the ability to retain detailed knowledge of disgusting amounts of the movies, TV and music I voraciously consume. Sometimes it stresses me out over things that shouldn't stress me out. Like not being able to get six degrees of Bacon (a game almost everybody in the world has forgotten about) in less than two movies on someone like Bud Cort (Cort's in M*A*S*H with Donald Sutherland who's in JFK with Bacon. Only took two minutes and didn't consult IMDB. Nice.) Or when people act like something that's totally obvious is obscure.

The other day, two of the paper's production guys were talking about the burger scene in Pulp Fiction. You know, "Le Big Mac," etc. I shouldn't have been annoyed by that. I like the movie and not everyone has my movie OCD. But I muttered under my breath "Yeah, but what do they call the whopper?"

Will, in an impeccably timed moment, said "How should I know? I didn't go to Burger King."

That was, in my opinion, pretty much right on.

News on the March!

Will made the paper the other day -- twice actually.

But more importantly, I found out that Will made the paper a long time ago.

Samuel F. Pickering Jr., a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, also found much to praise in the work of his student, William Griggs, a 16-year-old junior at Hartford Public High. "He wrote a story about how the food in the school cafeteria turns into a food monster, and this chap goes out and kills the monster," said Mr. Pickering...

The young writer "has a very nice style, with good crisp sentences," said Mr. Pickering, who teaches several writing courses at UConn and is the author of seven books. "And he told the story with taste, which in such a story can be hard to do. I took out some excess wordage, but told him, 'Look, we all get edited and rewritten, no matter how long we've been around.' " 'Will, Willie, Bill, Billy'

Mr. Griggs, whose family moved back to Hartford two years ago after living in Lubbock, Tex., for eight years, said he was thrilled at having Mr. Pickering as his mentor. "It's great," the young man said. "My English teacher told me about him."

On entering the program, each student wrote a brief biographical sketch. Mr. Pickering said he got a kick out of Mr. Griggs's, which began, "Greetings, I am William Griggs (A.K.A. Will, Willie, Bill, Billy, Billy the Kid, Tex, Texas, Texano and Texan Ice of Hartford Public High School.)"

Mr. Griggs described his writing as "an exciting mix of cemented yet creative imagination and bombastic language." He added, "Stories of strange creatures or parodies of great documents often find themselves being written and rewritten on a computer in my school."

Ha-ha. I might change the name of the blog to "Sitting Behind Texan Ice."

A Tale of Two Weekends

I think that for the most part, Will and I run neck and neck in terms of being cool. (I mean cool in the sense of "being like Fonzie.") I've got his thing, he's got his. It's not a competition, but if it were, it would probably be a tie.

At least most of the time. This weekend, for example, Will dunked over me in terms of doing cool shit. This weekend I watched a couple of movies just mostly because I wanted to send them back to Netflix and partially because I actually wanted to see them, read a paperback horror novel and got some writing done.

Meanwhile, Will got all "Into the Wild," kayaking down two Connecticut rivers in a thunderstorm.

So, right now, I = Richie Cunningham. Will = Arthur Fonzerelli.

You know where you are?

Today, Will came into work wearing this kick-ass GNR t-shirt. Will's kind of a touchy-feely techno hippy music-wise, but we share a love of old school hip hop and GNR. Any, the shirt combined a bunch of things that are awesome about old concert shirts. It had that almost shiny washed too many times quality to it. Plus the design was so lovely and minimal it was timeless (see dope logo above).

The GNR logo is so perfect, you never actually have to spell out what it is. I guess it's easier for them, as they're named after two recognizable objects, then it would be for like The Human League or Fugazi or Foghat or somebody. Speaking of which, what the fuck is a foghat? Feels like it's a seafaring term somehow. Do any of our zero readers know?

He tried to interest me in another GNR shirt he had from their Use Your Illusion tour, but that record sucks like a broken window on an airplane and Axl was all cookoo nuts for the tour.

Agony of Da Feet

Will habitually rides his bike to work, which means that his carbon footprint is no problem. His real footprint, however, is another matter altogether.

Case in point. I come back from stepping outside for a minute, and found Will at his desk, barefoot and pulling a pair of socks over his bare feet. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but he made a show of acting embarrassed for some reason. It was like I caught him masturbating.

Anyway, for an inaugural post, I guess that's sort of inauspicious. Nowhere to go but up!